Speedy Sunset ?

One for the GC " Sky at night " team , or anyone else who can help .................
Just got back from a lovely late holiday in the Canaries . As you know the islands are subtropical at around 28°N . Most evenings we went to a bar around 7:30 to watch the sunset . What surprised us is as soon as the disc of the sun touched the harbour wall , it disappeared beneath it in around 2 minutes. i.e. the full diameter of the sun.
Now I know that dawn and dusk happen very quickly on the equator , but why At our northerly latitudes we get nice lazy sunsets.

TIA

 

I think its because the nearer to the equator you are, the faster you are spinning.
In effect the poles are almost standing still.

 

Yep, you'm charging around at 1,667 kph at the equator, like being on the outside of a roundabout as opposed to the hub

 

When I was a school I seem to remember it was close to 1000mph, bearing in mind the world has a circumference of around 25 000 miles it comes out at roughly 24 hours in one day.

 

(Source Wikipedia)

 

Now I thought it might be that , the speed of the Earth as you approach the equator . Just seemed a bit to basic . Well that's another mystery of the universe solved ! Thanks all

 

"He was aproaching 70, but didn't apear to be speeding." (Spike M.)

 

I think it's probably a result of the angle at which the sun drops below the horizon at sunset Harry.

In tropical latitudes, the sun is very high in the sky during the middle part of the day, actually being directly overhead at certain times of the year. On such occasions because the sun is a apparently descending from such a high position, it would appear to drop vertically below the horizon at sunset. This would cause darkness to fall more quickly.

In higher latitudes such as ours, the sun does not reach such a high position in the sky, so at sunset it will descend at a more oblique angle than it would in tropical latitudes, meaning that it takes longer to fall below the horizon and therefore darkness falls more slowly.

Edit: Armandii beat me to it.